Exciting News!

Well, I'm happy to say that I've got baby news......not my own of course, because we all know how well that seems to be going.

But, one of my BFF's called yesterday to say she's cookin' a kid and I gotta say, if anyone deserves a little, it's her.  For all the time I've known her, she's wanted nothing more than to have a screeching child to chase around.  Bless her heart, she's watched countless nieces and nephews be born, and she's never once shown petty jealously, unlike me. 

Rae is one of those people that's really, really nice. if I didn't actually know her, I'd probably spend a lot of time disliking her because she's so nice and sweet.  I don't think I've ever heard her gossip, and I've only seen her mad once, and that was after a bad breakup when she was talking about stealing and torching her ex's car.....that she paid for.  

Of course, that's all water under the bridge now.  She's like the always optimistic gal who's incredibly successful, has landed herself a hottie husband that drives for UPS and she's got the cutest little house in the 'burbs.  

Now that I'm writing out all these redeeming qualities, it kind of makes me wonder what she sees in me; maybe I'm her secret alter ego that she just never lets out of the bag.

Anyway.....how's the weekend shaking up?  Last nite, we took the kid to Margarita's for a belated birthday dinner.  Apparently, the boy taking her out to breakfast the morning of her birthday, plus the overnight hotel slumber party with 6 friends, and the 6 weeks of horseback riding we bought for her as a gift weren't enough; can anyone say "spoiled?"  

I tried to explain to her that Margarita's would be incredibly busy on a Friday nite at 7 o'clock, but she'd hear nothing of it.  So we went, and we waited.  And, we were lucky enough to be standing right in front of a couple that had a screaming child.  And they were those parents that wouldn't take the damn kid out of the place.  

We're not talking an occasional scream, we're talking full on, terrorizing type screaming to the point where the father was covering his mouth in a desperate attempt to muffle the ear-drum bursting decibel level.  I'm pretty sure my ears started to bleed a little.

I, being the really nice person I am, wanted to turn around and be like, "If you can't shut that damn kid up I'm going to haul him out of here by his toenails and duct tape him to the top of my car."  Of course, before I could turn around and utter the words, the boy flicked me and said, "Don't even think about it."

Call me crass, but for Christ's sake, when your kid is screaming in a restaurant and you are subjecting countless other victims to the misery that you choose to inflict upon yourself, do everyone a favor and just leave.  Or at least take the kid outside.  Or, give him a drink.  A little peach margarita would have shut him right up.

See, this directly relates back to the Rae friendship; she would have whipped out her Anthropologie apron and pulled some treats out of her magic bag of goodies.  She would have cooed a little, maybe even invented a quick game or two so the kid would be pre-occupied and stop screaming.  She's good like that.  

I, on the other hand, just resented the hell out of the little beast.

Um, so that was our Friday.  Today, I'm working on finishing up my manuscript (still....and yes, I was still working on it last weekend too) and trying to also complete the suitcase that my friend Ms. Sarah (who owns Ms. Lulu's) asked me for about 6 months ago.  She saw Syd's and wanted a little piece of the action for herself.......however, I seem to be having a creative block" primarily because I don't want her to get the suitcase and be like "What the hell is this piece of shit?"

That's it.  I'm going to head back down to the basement and play with some more spray adhesive now.....have a great weekend!!

Memorial Day

For any of you that had a rockstar Memorial Day weekend, I commend you. Whooping it up, drinking lots of fabulous beverages and eating lots of stuff off the grill. I hope you had some for me too.

Our weekend was largely uneventful. An extended play date turned sleep-over turned to another play date gave the boy and I the first date night we've had since I don't know when. Nothing exciting, just Chinese food and the CSI: Miami marathon on Bravo.

Yesterday, I was completely lazy, spending a lot of time working on my book that my publisher is waiting on, plus outlining a second book that I've been contracted for. All the whilst, America's Next Top Model was playing in the background. I love that show almost as much as Hogan Knows Best; crazy eh?

The boy spent his weekend laying sod and generally trying to make our Sanford N Sons yard look a little more like a landscaper lives here. I'm proud to say that it's coming right along. Now, as long as that damn grub infestation doesn't return, we'll be all set.

All right, boring, blah, blah, I know. But that was my smashing holiday weekend - without the smashed part.

Hope you had a great one!

Leaf Blower is Shirtless, and It's Not a Pretty Sight

I think the neighbor has decided that he's just going to spend the summer gainfully UNemployed while his wife works two jobs. If I were her, I'd probably kick his ass, but since she spends most of her time in tube socks pulled up to her belly button, her ninja skills might not be as excellent as mine.

Needless to say, with all his spare time, Leaf Blower has spent a lots of days shirtless in his cut-off denims, puttering with his car. Just the other day he was out there repeatedly revving his engine while taking a break from waxing. I really wanted to yell out the window, "Just beat your chest, scratch your balls, and get over it already!"

But the boy wouldn't allow that. See, he's kind of a peace-keeper, one of those "don't piss off the neighbors" kind of people. It's really too bad because I could be having a lot of fun if he'd just let me.

Other than that, things have been relatively quiet around here. Several trips to the back doctor to fix my squished/stuck disks, lots of writing for About, preliminary writing for Upromise, which should be posted in the next two weeks, updates at Fashion-Fox, and the final 25,000 words for my publisher.

Next up? A book about "book marketing in the Web 2.0 world...." Sounds like a real page turner, doesn't it?

One Hell of a Party

Just now, two and a half days later, I'm finally able to talk about the rest of the kids' 9th birthday party.

After the police incident, the girls were relatively well behaved. There was no jumping on beds, no screaming, and only slight bouts of screeching. There was lots of loud giggling though.

I did manage to make it through the rest of the nite without ordering a pitcher of anything from room service too.....there were moments when I almost picked up the phone, but I resisted the temptation for fear the girls would go home and tell their parents I spent the whole nite boozing. It would really tarnish the halo I've got going.

The rest of Saturday evening was filled with lots of swimming, gift opening, pizza, the Nancy Drew Movie, and endless hours of Truth-or-Dare and Bloody-Mary. I dozed off on the not-so-comfortable pull-out couch (without a pillow mind you) around 11:30 and at 1:30 I was woken by the giggling girls. Despite my best efforts, Mommy Dearest reared her ugly head.

They finally settled in and at least were quiet, but God only knows when they actually fell asleep. Let me not forget to mention that we had 8 people in a room that was supposed to sleep 6, so that might have had something to do with the giggles......and it's also why I got jipped out of a pillow.

Then, at 7:30 Sunday morning, the most horrifying and piercing noise came from the girls room; it was the smoke detector. My initial thought was that one of them was playing with fire and then I heard it: the fire alarms "Wwwaaaaaa, Wwwaaaaa" out in the hall.

Holy Shit. The hotel was on fire. Holy Shit. I've got to get 7 girls down to the street from the 6th floor without any of them dying from smoke inhalation.

Oh my God. The firemen that work on the weekend are young and cute and I'm wearing my really ugly pajamas.

Anyway, I did manage to get them all downstairs, and thankfully the fire was not major. Only a small one in the lobby bathroom - seems like someone was trying to smoke inside. Tsk, tsk. So as we stand there, with hair standing on end, the girls are yelling and waving to the firemen as they start pulling out of the driveway. I, of course, am horrified.

On the way back to the room, the girls talked about how this was the coolest birthday party ever and they couldn't wait to write about it in their journals at school on Monday. I was trying to remember if I'd packed clean underwear.

The Sleep-Over Birthday Party :: The First Hours

We've been the official guests in Room 605 at the Embassy Suites for a little over 2 hours now; and already, the police have been here.

Not for us, but the seven screaming girls don't know that.

We started in the pool, where they screamed, and swam, and jumped, and screamed some more. In fact, I noticed that shortly after we arrived pool-side, ever single adult in the hot tub cleared out - stat.

Then we decided to "get a snack" at the manager's reception. That really equated to two pitchers of Shirley Temples, and 2 glasses of Pinot for me. Some chips, some nuts, and lots of glares from old ladies that find young girls in tie-dyed pajama pants repulsive. What made it even better was that the girls were obnoxiously over-polite and the old women weren't sure how to handle it.

Back to the room to open gifts, which the kids' friends were "begging" her to open. Shortly after, the demand for pizza was high and I attempted to order some, but the phones weren't working. That's where the police came in.

When I headed to the lobby to let the front desk know of the problem, the police walked in right behind me. Apparently, there was a 911 call from a vacant room here (a little spooky) and the police responded to that. Not one to miss a golden opportunity, I immediately bolted for the elevator, ran straight down the hall, and made all the girls go to the window.

"Do you see that police car? They're here because someone called and complained that we were being too loud. I talked to them, and they're leaving, but the next time they have to come back, we have to leave."

There's nothing quite like the fear of God to keep seven 9-year-old girls quiet.

Cakes and Pies.....and Cookies Too!

Ok, so there's not actually any pies involved at this point, but it could be coming.....

And I'm sorry that I haven't been around; the sad part is, I've spent much of my time lately as a recluse, and therefore, nothing all that exciting has happened. In fact, we've all been in pretty pissy moods around here.

The boy finally read the blog and realized that I was making fun of him here, and here, and he's been whiney since; at one point saying, "stop making me look like an asshole to all these people that read this stupid thing that don't even know me."

I tried to explain that it wasn't just him I made fun of.....I also make the neighbors look like assholes, his parents look like assholes, and random strangers I don't even know look like assholes when people read this thing. That didn't help.

Anyway, I digress. On to the cakes and cookies.

The kids' birthday is on Saturday - the big 0-9!! Wow! Where has the time gone? So, like any good mom does, I told her I'd bake her cookies to take to school tomorrow. We decided on these.

My mission today was simple: go to JoAnn's and get cookie sticks, sprinkles and some sort of "make the frosting pretty" contraption. My experience at JoAnn's, as usual, left something to be desired. However, instead of the annoying girl and Estelle Costanza, I had the really chic (and thin and tan) woman with her baby in the cart. "oooh, do you see what that says arie? It says light of my life.....who's my wittle wite of my wife??? Is that you arie? Are you my wittle wite of my wife???"

The poor child, who had a bow in her hair that was as big as her head just looked at her mother, screamed, and threw some soft of scrap booking supply at her face. Yet the mother was undeterred. I'm still not sure though if I was more disturbed by the way the mother talked to her kid, or the bow she had in her hair.

Anyway, back to the cookies. So, in theory, the umbrellas look easy and cute. And one mom even hopped on and reviewed them and said they were great, so I figured, why not? Clearly, they paid that mom because she lied. Those scallops are a bitch. A real mom's take? Don't waste your cookie dough.

So then we switched to daisy-shaped cookies on a stick. I had a cookie cutter, so I thought this would be a relatively easy alternative. They came out looking pretty damn yummy.

The problem? They didn't fit in the cute little bags with the twisty ties that I had bought. So we made them smaller, and then had a problem with the frosting smearing on the bags; admittedly, I should have seen that coming.

So nearly four hours later, the kid has cookies, all wrapped in cute bags with twisty ties that are daisy's, minus frosting, plus colored sugar - I thought it was a fair trade. Tomorrow, I have to tackle her cake.

Wanna hedge bets I'll be drinking by noon?

The Return of The Boy Bands

I've spent the majority of my week, laying on the couch, alternating ice packs and heating pads, with a remote and my laptop. Attempting to work on work, but working the trashy t.v. a hell of a lot harder.

So, what's newsworthy from my couch? Not a whole lot. But I did hear an interesting concert announcement today: The Backstreet Boys are coming to New Hampshire.

Now, my initial reaction was to actually laugh out loud, like, "Ha, Ha." Because of course, that Backstreet Boys coming to town is a joke. But no, indeed, it's not. Like, didn't the Backstreet Boys go out of style when I was in high school? No, wait, that was the New Kids On the Block. The Backstreet Boys were never even popular.

But here they sit, looking quite 2008. Strangely, I want to go to the concert, just to see who shows up.

Ok, I was going to end the post right there, but I decided to go to YouTube to link back to a New Kids on the Block video from back in the day, just for old times sake. Image my WTF face when I discovered this:



Seriously, what the hell is going on? Is this the mid-life crisis of the washed-up boy bands? What's next? Nick Lachey and 98 Degrees? Christ.

It's a Pain in My Back

You can tell that you're getting old when sitting on a concrete floor for an hour is enough to cripple you.

And that's exactly what it did.

You see, on Thursday's, I volunteer my time to teach a knitting class at the kids' school. And this past Thursday, I spent an hour, on a concrete floor, on my knees twisting back and forth. When I tried to stand up, I went down, hard.

So my weekend was essentially a "pain in my back" and my ass if you want to get technical....and my entire right leg all the way down to my ankle. So today is a trip to the chiropractor, who suspect I may have some form of bulging disk. I don't even know what that means, but guessing by his tone of voice on the phone, it's not a pleasant thing.

Alrighty, I'm off. To try and take a shower, which at this rate, should take me roughly an hour or so.......have a great Monday!

I've Been a Little Weepy Lately

Which is why I haven't written in a while.

Recently, I've found out that 5 - count 'em - FIVE people that are in my immediate circle of family and friends, are pregnant.  F.I.V.E.

Like, are they drinking special water or something?  And if so, I'm pretty sure it's the same damn water that's running through these faucets and I've got nothing in utero. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada.

Which makes me weepy. Which is why I haven't been writing.

And it's really such a bummer, because I got great news in the midst of it all - I got the gig with Upromise.com.  So, so excited.  But then I got the phone call that the 5th person was preggo, and my big fat happy balloon deflated pretty fucking quickly.  

Owell, there's always next month, right?